Welcome to the Modern Yoga Research website!

COVER OF RELE, 1927

Yoga originated in Asia, but nowadays it is found almost everywhere: it has become a global, international phenomenon. However, accurate information about modern yoga studies and about yoga’s roots, history, culture and philosophy can be difficult to find. The research that exists on these topics could be described as being ‘locked up’ in university libraries and discussed only by academics.

This website aims to help you find out more about established and current research into modern yoga and, more generally, about some of the most informative research on earlier forms of yoga. These are different but overlapping fields, and we believe that it is when they come together that a deeper understanding of modern yoga can happen.

We also want to bring you into contact with leading international scholars in these fields. This site’s contributors are typically university academics engaged in teaching, and in the professional study of forms of modern yoga and/or of South Asian history, culture and languages. But they are also sympathetic to the situation of committed practitioners who would like to find out more about the roots of their own practice and the wider context of yoga, whether contemporary or ancient.

Here you can find out who is active in the above areas of research and access, in some cases via direct downloads, some of their most relevant contributions.

There are other scholars of yoga and modern yoga that are not listed on this site: selecting them and collating their information takes time in already busy lives. We plan to add more as time goes by.